Melbourne imagined as Manhattan

This stunning image of the intersection of Bourke and Elizabeth streets by master photographer David Simmonds interprets the CBD in the vision of New York.
Mr Simmonds created the work late last year as one of a series commissioned by Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific for use in 84 deluxe suites in its new property in William St.
“The reason they selected me was they did not want the clichéd usual tourist views of Melbourne,” Mr Simmonds said.
Mr Simmonds visited the Wyndham on William site before construction had even started to assess what was required.
“As it was a high-rise in the middle of the city, I did not want to use skylines or architectural themes, as my work has often done in the past, but rather get down into the street level and show a side of Melbourne not always seen,” he said.
“For the GPO image, I wanted to get as much of the lovely old post office building, the mall, trams and people in as possible,” he said.
“As I often do, I went for a three-section vertical panorama using a 17 mm lens to get the GPO all in. At close distance, this naturally created some distortion which, instead of working to correct I liked, and pushed further to give this image a new edge – converting to high contrast monochrome completed the shift,” he said.
“I used the Hockney-influenced idea that there is always more than one decisive moment and I took many images to get a crowd that represented Melbourne’s cultural mix and energy. The final touch was to add some colour.”
Other themes in the series include “live music” from Bennett’s Lane, “food and funk” from Hardware Lane and “sport, gardens and culture” – comprising more than 1000 small images, taken from the top of Federation Square.
The final series of six images are available as signed, limited, 1200 x 837 prints from the artist. See www.lightlinespace.com
(go to collections).